A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Short History Of Chinese Philosophy (Excerpts)

For a long time, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy has always been reputed as anintroductory book for study of Chinese culture, even a cultural classic exerting significantinfluence on people’s lifetime because of its modest length, a comprehensive description andthorough understanding of Chinese philosophy as well as the popular and easy language, whichgreatly advances the spread of Chinese philosophical ideas. However, it’s in short of studies onthis work from the perspective of translation. In fact, the short history owns special meaning fortranslation. Since the book was written in English firstly, it has experienced a “C-E” process whenthe author created, then it will undergo a “C-E-C” process, namely, a back translation on the wholeafter the translator turns into Chinese. Therefore, the return of jargon and accuracy will pose ahuge challenge to translators. In addition, the original English texts boast lots of expressions ofChinese philosophical ideas that worth learning, which will offer referential value for C-Etranslation of Chinese philosophical works and make contribution to the output of Chinese culture.The report is based on the English-Chinese translation of “Chapter4—Confucius: the FirstTeacher” and “Chapter7—the Idealistic Wing of Confucianism: Mencius” of A Short History ofChinese Philosophy. The report has mainly applied the two methods of exemplifying andcontrasting under the guidance of skopos theory, analyzed the translation combined with the threeprinciples of the skopos theory, and explored three aspects in translation of such documents: howto precisely return quotations and chapter name back to the ancient form to insure the academicfeature, how to use popular language to reflect the author’s intention of making the short historyeasy to understand, and the last is how to focus on the logic coherence of the translation language.As the report reveals, a translator should have a comprehensive and thorough understandingof texts involving strong professional speciality and wide scope of knowledge, and not only payattention to the original context, but also the comprehension of Chinese philosophical culture. It ishoped that this report offers some referential value for the study in this field.